Winners & Losers: May Madness, Attendance and New Blood

The Final Four is set, and an exciting quarterfinal round is in the books.

Cornell, Denver, Duke and Syracuse will be competing at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia for the national championship. In DII, Mercyhurst and Le Moyne move on, and RIT and Stevenson will battle in the DIII final.

It's been a great weekend, full of highs and lows and winners and losers.

Winners

Casey Vock (@cvock)

Midwest Lacrosse Fans and Indiana — Some will say that maybe it's better to hold quarterfinal matchups in smaller stadiums with capacities somewhere around 20,000, but you've got to view the attendance of 7,749 at Lucas Oil Stadium as a win for lacrosse and its fans. The NCAA did a fine job hosting the event, and the games were awesome. Indy is a great city I've spent a lot of time in, but as a young buck visiting the Circle City with my Brine M1 in hands, I wondered if that might have been the only stick in the state back then. So now it's pretty cool to see that the sport is in fact gaining momentum out this way. Walking through a grocery store, I spotted a Center Grove lacrosse jacket — a school attended by members of family, including my younger brother for a quick spell in the 90s. Talking with my relatives, their awareness of lacrosse has grown tremendously as more and more schools in Indiana picked it up. The success of the quarterfinal event is only going to help that. (It had to be pretty exciting for students from nearby Carmel to get to hit the field at halftime.) And it's interesting that this weekend also saw the Culver Academy down The Hill Academy. Quite the weekend for lacrosse in Indiana.

John Jiloty (@jjiloty)

Rob Pannell — I think RP3 locked up the Tewaaraton Trophy with his eight-point outing on Saturday. He’s now six points away from tying Matt Danowski’s all-time NCAA points record (despite playing in nine less games), and he’s lined up to have a season for the ages: shot at Cornell’s first NCAA title since 1977, NCAA points record and Player of the Year honors. He seems to be doing it the right way too: spread the ball around and making his teammates better. Steve Mock is also having a season for the ages, and Pannell is a big part of that.

Matt Kinnear (@MattKinnear)

DII, DIII Games — As exciting as the DI games were on the ESPN networks this weekend, games at other levels might have topped them. Saturday, Limestone gave Mercyhurst everything it could. The Lakers persevered, scoring with 4 seconds on the clock to force overtime, then winning the game in OT off a Deven Alves goal and some key saves from Michael Grace. On Sunday, RIT beat previously undefeated and No. 1 Cortland using some unique plays: a hidden ball trick, and their goalie dishing out a nice pass from X. And of course, Salisbury-Stevenson needs no description how intense that rivalry always is. And for all the talk of DI quarterfinal attendance, look at these numbers: 2,311 at Stevenson; 1,042 at Mercyhurst and 1,602 at Cortland. Not bad.

Zach Babo (@ZachBabo)

New Blood in the DIII Championship (RIT and Stevenson) — While I have obvious sympathy for great programs like Cortland and Salisbury who fell in their respective semifinal matchups, it’s kind of exciting to realize one way or another we’re going to crown a first-time champion in the DIII Final this coming Sunday. RIT has been on a tear this year, and they got some vengeance for a midseason 2OT loss to Cortland by downing the Dragons 10-9 in OT Sunday. Stevenson got some payback in the long and bitter rivalry they’ve cultivated with Salisbury over several seasons, finally knocking off the Gulls in a semifinal, convincingly I might add. Now RIT and Stevenson play a rematch of a 12-11 OT Mustangs’ win back on Feb. 27, the first DIII game of the season I covered. Kind of full circle now, and if this first game serves as a potential preview, the rematch should be a great game to watch.

Terry Foy (@TerenceFoy)

Winning Legacies — In the Orange’s three-minute comeback vs. Yale Saturday and the Blue Devils’ late victory, as well, there was an element of “Syracuse being Syracuse” and “Duke being Duke” that seems like the most apt way to explain how each team was able to pull out Ws that seemed unlikely with very little time left on the clock. Pretty remarkable how that unfolded.

ILWomen.com's Danielle Bernstein (@DaniBernstein)

An exciting Tewaaraton race — While it appears Rob Pannell has all but locked up the Tewaaraton Award for the men, the women’s race is still pretty open. Reigning winner Katie Schwarzmann was the favorite following the announcement of the five finalists, but teammate Alex Aust put up another great performance in the Terps quarterfinal win over Duke, scoring five goals and adding two assists. Alyssa Murray had a three-point performance in Syracuse’s 13-9 win over Florida and Kara Cannizzaro scored three goals and added two assists as North Carolina advanced to the final four. Championship weekend could provide some separation, but the race is close.

Losers

Casey Vock (@cvock)

Late Leads — If this weekend proved anything, it reinforced what might sound like common sense, but is so crucial for teams competing at this level — no lead is safe. I don't enjoy interviewing the losing teams come playoff time. The look on Marcus Holman's face as he answered questions from media members nearly got me choked up. But it's the way the ball bounces sometimes. If anything, some of the teams and players who are reeling from unthinkable losses will only become better and stronger people from that sort of experience.

John Jiloty (@jjiloty)

Fans in the Mid-Atlantic — The third-smallest crowd for an NCAA Quarterfinal came Saturday in College Park. Sure, Cornell was probably the closest team at about 350 miles away, but Syracuse is known to be a big draw and despite a cold, rainy day this is playoff lacrosse in the sport’s epicenter and two Tewaaraton finalists (Rob Pannell, JoJo Marasco) and another high-scoring attackman in Logan Schuss were playing. A crowd of more than 4,000 should have come out to Capital One Field at Byrd Stadium on Saturday. Why the NCAA Quarterfinals compete with Preakness is a good question, but it’s happened in the past and the crowd has been more than double what it was Saturday. Need to make sure people show up to the Linc in Philly this weekend.

Matt Kinnear (@MattKinnear)

Great careers coming to an end — It’s a big loss for all of us college lacrosse fans to see some of the great college careers come to an end this weekend: Logan Schuss, John Kemp, and Marcus Holman to name just a few. But fear not: We’ve got MLL lacrosse to look forward to. Sorry to see those guys fall short of a national title, but great careers they should be proud of. Now it’s time to see what they bring to the pro leve.

Zach Babo (@ZachBabo)

A sanctimonious NCAA — Sorry, but this time of year, and back in March during the basketball tournament, I just get tired of seeing all of the self righteous NCAA commercials talking about how the NCAA is all about supporting athletes, and all the great things they do, and the in game announcements at venues with similar messages, and it all gets a little too much for me. Yeah the NCAA helps promote amateur sports, and there are plenty of nonrevenue sports that get a push or subsidy from the NCAA, but let’s not forget it’s all funded through huge money TV contracts and endorsement deals, most notably the deal for the NCAA basketball tournament which is worth north of $1 billion. The NCAA is not some wholly altruistic entity. It is another large trade group that looks out for it’s own interests firsts, and then helps everyone play ball later. If you haven’t already read this great Atlantic piece, it’s worth a look.

Terry Foy (@TerenceFoy)

Spring — The MIAA season is over. There are three DI men’s lacrosse games and eight total NCAA lacrosse games left. Where has the season gone? In a year that saw snow into March pretty much everywhere and into April some places, the heat hasn’t become sweltering yet — it feels like there should be more lacrosse left to be played.

ILWomen.com's Danielle Bernstein (@DaniBernstein)

Parity — It seemed there was more parity in Division I women’s lacrosse in 2013. Teams like UConn, UMass, Denver and Stony Brook all put together fantastic seasons. The Big East was the most competitive it had ever been. Three of the above four teams made their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Yes, some of that is due to the tournament expansion, but the Pioneers earned an at-large and the Seawolves would have been in regardless of winning the America East. Yet here we are leading up to final four weekend and the top four seeds have all advanced to championship weekend. This isn’t to say I was expecting an unseeded team to advance. My point is that the growth of the game is fantastic, but much like on the men’s side, parity has yet to show on championship weekend.